Is Guinness’s new sauce a success or a flop? Team loveFOOD try it out.
Guinness has released a new table sauce just in time for the beginning of the barbecue season.
The brewer says that it is perfect for slathering on steak and other meat. But will Guinness enhance your grilling, or leave a sour taste in your mouth?
The results
The sauce smells like HP Brown Sauce: rich and slightly fruity. However, it’s thick and gloopy and darker than its brown counterpart. In previous years, Heinz collaborated with drinks giant Diageo to create an HP Guinness sauce, which found something of a cult following. However, that has long since sold out.
This, however, is not all that. “Not particularly Guinness-y” is the first comment out of most mouths, and there were quite a few mentions of a strange, lingering aftertaste. I don’t think it’s too offensive, though it stays in the mouth for quite some time. One person calls it “awful” though, and another says that it tastes charcoal-like but not in a good way: not smoky, but burnt.
It’s also rather sweet, considering Guinness’s dry flavour. Only one tester said that they could taste the Guinness, but said it tasted like rather an old pint. Others say it tastes like Jack Daniel's barbecue sauce, which has rather a sweet tang too.
When eaten with sausages, the sausages help to mask some of the bad elements of the sauce, but the consensus seems to be “give us ketchup”.
So it’s a thumbs down from loveFOOD for Guinness sauce. Personally, I'd recommend enjoying a pint of the black stuff with your steak rather than settling for this.
Would you give Guinness sauce a try? Were you a fan of the HP Guinness crossover? What's your favourite sauce to use with barbecued meat? Let us know in the Comments below.
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